


Mercy Bears Richer Fruit

by Blacktablet (Ishamaeli)



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, F/M, Kink Meme, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-21
Updated: 2012-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-29 22:05:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/324662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ishamaeli/pseuds/Blacktablet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"We both knew perfectly well with whom he was sharing the sitting room that evening, and it was not the John Watson he had once known."</i> (<a href="http://sherlockkink.livejournal.com/1594.html?thread=4920634#t4920634">prompt</a>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mercy Bears Richer Fruit

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by flying_android who agreed to take a look at my characterisations of Holmes and Watson, and jacknjill270 who made sure my commas behaved themselves. Also thanks to wave_of_sorrow who reassured me that this was not the worst bullshit I'd ever spewed on paper when I had my moment of doubt. Spoilers to the canon stories _The Final Problem_ and _The Empty House._
> 
>  **Disclaimer:** Messieurs Holmes and Watson are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s brilliant inventions but public domain nowadays.

Sherlock Holmes had always been, first and foremost, a man of justice.

Therefore, as I found myself standing at the outer door to our Baker Street rooms after Holmes’s long absence from them on a warm summer evening in June of 1894, I felt a mild pang of regret and—

I believe the other emotion was simply fear; fear that now when we would at last meet face to face for the first time after so many bitter years apart, we would both of us be unrecognisable to the other, forever changed as much by our lesser transgressions as the greater ones.

Once I had known every inch of Holmes inside and out, his skin and his motives, if never truly his mind. It was on a bitingly cold day in early 1886, right before we were pulled into the case concerning the beryl coronet, that I failed to divert my appreciative gaze from Holmes’s form quickly enough as he turned away from the window, having finally stopped cursing the weather and moved on to a more pleasant topic of the opera. In that instant as he laid his eyes on me, who had been contemplating the curve of his neck in relation to the curve of his backside, he saw what had occupied my mind in the shame and the pleasure battling on my features, and a magnificent smile spread across his face.

“Why, my dear Watson,” he chuckled gently, regarding me with fond amusement as so often was his way. “I thought you’d never gather the courage.” Then he strode to my chair where I sat, absolutely speechless, bent his lean body at the waist and proceeded to make sure that I would remain silent for a good while yet.

I’m afraid that my first words after this stunning revelation were neither of any particular intelligence nor a superb brand of wit, for at the time being my usual vocabulary was limited to praising deities and giving Holmes somewhat terse directives. I remember that he did not mind it particularly much then.

Our relationship was not without its faults; Holmes indulged in his vices as often as before, and as the magnitude of the feeling that I had for him had thus finally been freely allowed to grow I felt the pain of watching him destroy himself in such a manner all the more keenly. Admittedly, I had my own problems as I struggled with the changed nature of our intimacy. It is a long way from fantasies to actions after all, and I had been raised first a Scotsman and then a soldier. The opinions of the society that had been imprinted on me were not altogether easy to erase, not even with love.

As time wore on we began to fight more often, sometimes over perfectly foolish matters if we were both looking for an excuse to wound the other. Whenever we were working on a case it was like the days of old had returned, but if there was no work to occupy Holmes’s sharp mind he fell into depression and embraced the morocco case rather than his lover. There were days when I avoided him completely, my heart too raw to stand the sight of him in such a deplorable state, and weeks when he was nowhere to be found, when he undoubtedly inhabited one of the flats he rented in the city. During those times, it was less and less often that I found it in myself to go after him and coax him into coming back home.

Eventually our fights became tragically regular and Holmes’s biting remarks upon my character - for he can be appallingly cruel and cutting as a barbed wire when he wants to, especially when his mood causes him to doubt most sincere declarations of affection - drove me away from him and to the embrace of the lovely Miss Morstan. Holmes did not approve of the decision and hinted with his words that it was what he had been expecting all along from such a proper gentleman as I. If I am completely honest, it was not what I truly wanted any more than it was what Holmes wanted, but at the time I thought I could not bear the constant tension anymore and had to do something.

Later I reluctantly came to realise that my decision had been made with too much haste and that, perhaps, we could have salvaged our relationship if we had tried hard enough. However, I believe that I loved my wife and was genuinely happy with her, as I was happy when Holmes’s contempt of her diminished and his hurt pride healed enough to allow me to rejoin him on his cases. We made the effort to repair our friendship and, to some degree, succeeded.

How I regret leaving him now...! If I had known that I would only have the best of both worlds for two short years, I would have endured, made amends, compromised as much as I could - would indeed have done anything under my power to stay with Holmes and convince him that his fear was unfounded.

But that was not to be, and I lost him to the falls of Reichenbach in 1891, as finally and surely as I lost my darling Mary to consumption only a year later. And yet...

And yet there I was, staring up at the lit window of our old sitting room. As everyone else in the city, I too had heard the news and read the papers on the Ronald Adair case and on Holmes’s “miraculous return.” Unlike to the rest of London’s populace, it had not been much of a shock to me to hear that Holmes was alive as I had been well aware of that for several months by then.

I had done some investigating of my own back in early January, as soon as it had occurred to me that someone was tracking my more recent movements across the continent. It was some time after the twenty-second one that I heard from another man who was interested in the whereabouts of Moriarty’s gang, so I looked into it, putting into use every trick that I had learned from my friend and lover. I can’t recall whether I thought that I might join forces with this mysterious man, or that I might need to dispose of the competition.

Imagine my surprise when I ran into an old acquaintance and he mentioned that a gruff old mugger had been inquiring after me. This trend continued in other locations of interest; an old man, one who had obviously led as questionable a life as those he approached, had been asking about a fellow named John Watson. It felt as if he had been everywhere, followed every single footstep that I had taken since leaving Mary’s funeral years ago. Call it an instinct honed by necessity, but even though the description of the mugger did not sound familiar to me, my subconscious told me in no uncertain terms that it was Holmes in disguise who was hunting me.

Soon enough I was myself back in London, looking for my twenty-third one, and found out that Holmes had set the hounds of the Yard on my scent. By that time I had no doubt that he had made the connection between my movements and the men who had worked for Moriarty developing a tendency to turn up very definitely dead. As it was, I had to go deep underground to avoid detection by either Inspector Lestrade and his fine men or worse yet, by Holmes himself.

How amusing it was, then, that while I was following my last target and waiting for my chance to act, the man got himself arrested for murder - thanks to none other than Holmes - and now awaited his trial in one of Scotland Yard’s more secure holding cells. He would be hanged for sure. When I had read of the incident in the papers, I had laughed long and hard, and cried, and then sat down with a cigarette to think about what had to be done next.

These happenings had inevitably led me back to the door of 221B Baker Street, my goal clear in my mind.

It was late enough that Mrs Hudson and the other servants had already gone to bed, and the last tendrils of light had disappeared, turning dusk into night. I had never returned my keys to Holmes, and he had never asked for them; the key turned silently in the lock and the door opened without much noise.

The familiar smell of the foyer hit me like a physical blow and I wasted a few precious seconds by simply standing there and breathing deeply before I closed the door behind me and ascended the steps to the sitting room. That door was unlocked and, in a bout of reckless bravery, I did not even stop to think over my plan but yanked it open, revealing the gas lamp lit room and Holmes working bent over his desk.

“Mrs. Hudson? I thought I told you I would not be requiring supper today, however late.” There was genuine annoyance in his words and I did not doubt for a second that he had done exactly that. If the experiment he was working on was enough to distract him so that he did not recognise my gait as I climbed the seventeen steps to our home, surely such a trivial thing as nourishing his body was to be cast aside for the time being as completely irrelevant.

“I hear you have been looking for me,” I said in greeting, barely able to hold myself together; so great was the emotional impact of seeing the familiar figure of my lover after several years apart.

To his credit, Holmes did not flinch or whirl around in his tattered dressing gown. He set down the glass jar whose contents he had been studying, wiped his hands clean on a worn towel and made a few notes in the notebook lying open next to his work station on the table. Only then did he turn around, his gaze raking me up and down and taking in all the details. I could see that his hands that rested on the back of the wooden chair were thin and white-knuckled, and his whole body was tense like a coiled spring.

“Why have you come?” he inquired coldly after a while. “To kill me?”

My jaw dropped at his outrageous question, and we regarded each other silently for a moment. “To kill you, Holmes?” I finally asked him, puzzled. “Why would I ever even consider such a thing?” His distant manner hurt me but what had to be one of his wildest theories yet wounded me even more. I felt my throat constrict and swallowed to force down the sting of his suspicion.

Holmes shrugged, the mask of indifference slipping over his features as easily as ever, hiding from me what he really thought while leaving me an open book for him. “You tell me, Watson. I am beginning to think that I hardly knew you at all.”

“So am I if you indeed imagine that I’m here to kill you! By Jove, Holmes!” I cried. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps I am a book that is written in a language he cannot read; a language that bears as much meaning for him as Arabic bears for me.

“Killing men,” he hissed, “seems to be no stranger business to you than healing them. What happened? Have you completely lost your mind?”

“I left it in Switzerland, Holmes.”

It was cruel to say so but I needed a little time to gather my wits. I do not know what kind of welcome I had expected from my - former, it seemed - friend and lover, but the searing coldness and anger that I briefly read written upon his features at my reply had not been it. Closing the door behind me, I stepped further into the room. “I left my sanity behind with my heart.”

Holmes sneered and stood up straighter, looking down at me. “Save me the romantic drivel, if you would be so kind.”

“It is true!” I shouted, and then took a deep breath to calm myself. I had to go about this the right way, and there was only one way that was the right way. I had to be more honest to him than I had ever been to myself. “I have never killed an innocent man in my life, Holmes; I swear that on my honour. It is possible that I did, back in Afghanistan where war made everyone an enemy regardless of their innocence, but I have never knowingly killed anyone who did not deserve it.”

“Then why?” Holmes insisted, sounding perplexed and... Was that hurt that flashed in his eyes? Could he be thinking that my becoming a criminal was a personal insult directed at him? Of course, I had used some of his methods to cover my tracks, which he no doubt had noticed once he knew it was I who was behind the deaths, but still…

“Revenge,” I told him bleakly. “Moriarty was the reason I lost you. I have never claimed to be a saint, Holmes, you know bloody well that I’m not. I hated him for what he did, and it was only my bad luck that he laid at the bottom of the falls with you.” My friend visibly blanched at that but I did not care. “Moriarty was not there to pay, so as soon as Mary died, I began to hunt down his lackeys. Lestrade has probably told you that he only received the folder you left behind last year. That is because I used it as a resource. I wanted... I wanted to get to them before he did.”

Holmes’s sharp grey eyes studied me as if I were a particularly interesting specimen of _Acherontia atropos_ , pinned into place under smooth glass. “Inspector Lestrade and I have been able to connect seven murders to you,” he revealed suddenly. “ _Seven, Watson!_ Here in London! None of those men had anything to do with Moriarty, and I would know. What had they done to deserve death?”

For the first time I detected a hint of discomfort in his expression. It crept along the distaste like an ugly maggot, turning down the corners of his mouth and leaving deep, worried creases on his forehead in its wake. “You yourself have often ridiculed the crime solving skills of the Yarders, Holmes,” I reminded him calmly. “You deduce.”

Holmes’s mouth opened as realisation dawned. “Good God, man.” After giving me a calculating look, he strode past me and went to the sideboard. His elegant hands appeared shaky when he poured himself a generous brandy, taking care not to spill any. He then drank it all in one go. “How many more?” he asked roughly.

I contemplated the rate at which Holmes was ingesting brandy but found it hard to believe that lessening the impact of my appearance with alcohol was what he had in mind. In spite of his lean physique, it took quite a lot to disturb the regal steadiness of his walk or the impossible speed of his mind, and he was not quite there yet.

To be honest, I would have been surprised if he had been trying to medicate this wound, this crack in his reality by means of intoxication – and perhaps I would have been a trifle disappointed too. We both knew perfectly well with whom he was sharing the sitting room that evening, and it was not the John Watson he had once known.

No, this John Watson was quite a different animal. “I did my own share of travelling while you were... indisposed,” I began. I felt the familiar thrill of success thrum through me when I briefly recalled the reasons and the results of my trips abroad. “I discovered that Professor Moriarty had quite a lot of hands willing to do his work elsewhere in Europe.”

“So you saw it fit to cut them off,” Holmes murmured softly, not looking at me. The anger seemed to have left him, and he was as close to slouching as I had ever seen him. “Quite literally.”

“Yes.”

“And afterwards?”

“I couldn’t just stop, Holmes! London is full of criminals who are worth no more than the dirt on the soles of their shoes. They had to be dealt with.” My whole frame trembled with the force of my conviction, with the sole truth that I had taught myself to believe during the lonely years. “You were gone. I had to do it.”

“Had to,” he repeated dully.

“Yes! I was—I was tracking Moran before the murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair. He was the last of Moriarty’s lackeys that I knew the whereabouts of.”

Holmes placed the now empty glass on the table and crossed his thin arms in front of his chest. When he cast his eyes upon me once more there was infinite sadness in them. The way he said my name then sounded almost desolate. “Watson... You do realise that I cannot—that I have to—”

“They were all blackguards, Holmes,” I hurried to continue my explanation. “I checked, and I re-checked, and only then I acted. To me they were as guilty as Moriarty himself. I couldn’t have… If I’d had _any_ doubt…”

“I will have to send a telegram to Lestrade, Watson,” Holmes said forcefully, refusing to look at me and choosing to stare at the settee instead. The line of his mouth was grim. “You know that as well as I do.”

It felt like he had punched me in the stomach. “Is there nothing, nothing at all that I can do?”

“What would you have _me_ do?” he cried with exasperation, the tight fists of his hands betraying his agitation. “Lestrade already knows that you are behind the murders. He has the evidence. Dear Lord, Watson, I helped him gather it!” Holmes was, I believe, as close to tears as I had ever seen him. “There will be a trial. I may know that you had your reasons, but I fear that I will remain the only one who believes them.”

“Then you must know that I will hang.” My God, how much I longed to hold him when he turned away from me and wrapped his arms around himself, unwilling to let me see how much my remark had hurt him. I was one of the very few who knew just how capable of feeling Holmes was, and to see him in agony such as that—No, I could not bear it.

Very tentatively, I stepped closer and reached over to place a hand on his thin shoulder, gripping it firmly. We both gasped, I believe; he because he had not expected the touch, and I because it was the first time I had touched him in years, the first time I could reassure myself that yes, he was indeed alive and not a mere spectre conjured by my imagination.

Holmes turned around slowly without dislodging my grip. He looked me in the eye, his narrow features pinched with indecision, and when he carefully lifted his own hand to gently cup my cheek, my eyes fell closed of their own accord. I did not even dare breathe for fear of startling him.

He leaned forward until I could feel his warm breath on my face, smelling of rich brandy. “You do not know how I have missed you, my dear Boswell,” he said quietly. “If only you had been patient and waited—! But no, how could you have known that I was coming back?” I was aware of him pulling away, of the rustle of clothing, the whoosh of the dressing gown as it slipped off of his shoulders and to the floor.

“I wish you had trusted me with your plan,” I said simply.

“So do I, more than anything. And that I had known you better.” He paused and when he continued, there was a peculiar tone to his speech. “Tomorrow, I will send a telegram to Lestrade, first thing in the morning. I do believe that it is up to you what it will say, my dear.”

I blindly swept my thumb over his prominent collarbone, feeling the cloth of his shirt and the warmth under it. “Moran is dead, Holmes. I wish to rest.” I opened my eyes and saw him in front of me, in his shirtsleeves. Despite the seriousness of the situation – despite that there were years, numerous fights and dead men between us – I felt a tiny spark of desire, a reminder of the old.

Holmes no doubt observed it for his breathing hitched tellingly. “It’s all I can give you,” he whispered. It would have been useless to say ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘It does not matter;’ as of now, I most likely had but scant weeks to live.

It was Holmes who pressed his lips hungrily against mine, as aware of the distance – both temporal and spatial – that existed between us, and as willing as I were to cover it.

From then on I could barely concentrate; only flashes of what happened seemed to register in my mind. His mouth against mine, the sweet hidden taste and smell of familiar tobacco invading my senses, heady as opium. The planes of skin that had lost the unhealthy paleness while he had been away but which still under my tan hands, forever marked by the Afghan sun, looked as white as ever; skin not marred by moles and scars but rather decorated, enhanced by them.

The sound of his bedroom door creaking open, the breathless moan he gave voice to as I dropped down on my knees in front of him. All these I recorded, from the tiniest quiver of the muscles of his stomach under my hand to the violent jerk that shook his whole body when I finally gave in to the urge and bent my head to taste him. Neither our actions nor the years existed between us in his bed; nothing at all but we did.

Holmes hurried me on with urgent words and pleas that morphed into muffled cries of pleasure when I entered his body with my fingers. Outside, the darkness was deep and there was no sign of morning in the horizon so I could take my time bringing him to the brink of his death before allowing him to retreat, again and again until he threatened me with physical violence if I did not bugger him that instant. I reminded him that there would not be much buggery for either of us if he knocked me unconscious, to which he replied with his most imperious stare that I had never been able to disobey.

We moved as one in the shadows of his bedroom, neither of us quite daring enough to light even a single candle. Not that we needed the flickering light; I remembered what Holmes looked like when I filled both his mind and his body, the look of concentration mixed with utter bliss that at the same narrowed his grey eyes and made his mouth lax as he fought for a breath deep enough when none truly sufficed. He was tight, tight and smooth and hot around me, and I knew instinctively that no matter what he had done to survive after the falls, he had not taken another to his bed.

I hastened to bring my lover off first when I felt my own pleasure build to near uncontrollable level, having always enjoyed the breathless sounds Holmes made when I brushed against his over-sensitive flesh. He prevailed, however, and I died a little death inside him with his name on my lips, the sound searing them and branding them with it for all to see who had the eyes to see.

He lifted his other hand, the fingers shaking, to feel the contours of my face as he lay on his back and I fought to regain my breath. The limber digits tasted of salt as I recovered enough to suck and nibble on them, and in less than a minute Holmes’s seed spilled between us and I leaned down to swallow the throaty groan he gave at the moment of his release. The kiss was slow and lazy, broken only by me when I foolishly started at the sound of sparrows waking up outside.

We settled down to lie more comfortably. I rummaged on the floor for my shirt to make a half-hearted attempt at cleaning us up, and Holmes arranged my limbs to his liking, seemingly content with me lying nearly on top of him.

“The thing I shall least regret,” I told him after having quietly studied his features in the early grey light of the approaching morning, “is that I fell in love you. In fact, I shall not regret it at all.”

Silence settled down on us heavily until Holmes cleared his throat and bit his lip, something I had never seen him do before. I marvelled at this new habit and nearly missed what he said next, although I would not have wanted to for the world.

“John, I do hope that you know I love you most earnestly. I should be – I was – utterly lost without you by my side.” It all came out in a rush, like he had rehearsed it in his mind and was now in a hurry to say it out loud, an actor afraid of missing his cue, but I could tell that he said it with perfect honesty. Holmes’s eyes searched mine and I could only guess at what he so desperately hoped to find there.

The skin of his lips was soft when I traced the wide pad of my thumb over them. “I know,” I said into his mouth, gazing at him warmly and feeling the slightest tremble of his lips under mine. “I would not have come if I had doubted that you do, my dearest.”

Holmes’s eyes widened in shock. Then he gave a broken sob, a harsh and a pained sound that tore right through his chest and into mine, and he twisted his left hand in my hair to pull me closer into a terrible, frantic kiss. It was more teeth than tongue as he took all that was mine and made it his, marking me as his property with a bite on my lip that was nearly deep enough to bleed.

I calmed him down with my hands in his dark hair and pressed my face into his neck, murmuring all kinds of nonsense too softly to hear. Holmes eventually gave a great sigh and relaxed into the bed, staring at the ceiling without truly seeing it. We lay there for a long while; at one point I quoted half a sonnet to him only to see if he was paying attention, and the immortal words of the Bard barely got a soft snort out of him.

“It’s morning,” I reminded him when the first rays of the rising sun crept into the room.

Holmes flinched, glancing sideways at the window. “Yes,” he muttered, “I suppose it is.” Then he craned the long column of his neck to brush his lips against mine in a gesture of forgiveness - whether he was asking for it or giving it, I didn’t know – and when he eventually forced himself to pull back, all that was left was the cold metal kiss of his revolver at my temple.

He had always been a man of justice.

 

 

 _‘When a doctor goes wrong, he is the first of criminals.’_


End file.
